NYT: Leaders Who Build to Stroke Their Egos

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Leaders Who Build to Stroke Their Egos

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Books of The Times. Published: December 13, 2005

The pyramids, Versailles, the Taj Mahal, the Kremlin, the World Trade Center: it's hardly news that the rich and powerful have used architecture to try to achieve immortality, impress their contemporaries, stroke their own egos and make political and religious statements.
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In addition, Mr. Sudjic provides some brisk assessments of such high-profile architects as Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind. And he examines the propensity of many prominent architects to hire themselves out to unsavory - and in some cases, morally reprehensible - clients. He notes, for instance, that Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier took part in a competition to design Stalin's Palace of the Soviets and points out that Albert Speer and Mies van der Rohe "were both ready to work" for Hitler, the only difference being that Speer "devoted himself entirely to realizing the architectural ambitions of his master," while Mies, for all his political expediency, "was unyielding about architecture."

As for Rem Koolhaas, who declined to take part in the ground zero design competitions because of what he saw as the project's "overbearing self-pity," he vigorously pursued the job of building the new headquarters of Central China Television, the propagandistic voice of the state. (....)

continue reading: New York Times, Books: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/books/13kaku.html